By the time she died in 1988, the painter Clementine Hunter had become renowned for her simple, idyllic depictions of country life outside Natchitoches that fetched several thousand dollars apiece. Collectors snapped them up.

View full sizeClementine Hunter usually painted on hard cardboard, and featured one theme per painting. A Baton Rouge couple who forged her work veered from that path. Above, 'Chicken Hauling Flowers,' by Hunter.

Connoisseurs weren't the only ones to take note of this self-taught folk artist, a descendant of slaves who lived most of her 101 years at Melrose Plantation. At least five forgers have tried to capitalize on the abiding interest in Hunter's work, said Tom Whitehead, a close friend of the artist, who has not only become an expert on her work but also has developed an ability to tell which paintings are genuine.

The most notable members of that group -- and, Whitehead said, the only forgers to be identified publicly -- are William Toye, an artist, and his wife, Beryl Ann Toye. Twice in 37 years, the Toyes have been accused of duplicating Hunter's paintings and selling them to unsuspecting art lovers.

'I didn't know if I was doing right or wrong, but I was painting,' Clementine Hunter said in 1985.

The first case against the couple, which grew out of two 1974 raids in New Orleans in which 22 alleged forgeries were seized, came to nothing.

A plea deal is struck

This year, after federal charges were brought against the Toyes, their plot unraveled. William Toye, 80. pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, and his wife, 70, pleaded guilty to the same charge on Tuesday.

In return for the Toyes' pleas, fraud charges against them were dropped.

William Toye, 79, is "in the early stages of some sort of dementia," which would have made putting him on trial difficult, said Wayne Blanchard, his attorney.

The plea agreement will let him avoid imprisonment, Blanchard said.

Beryl Toye, 69, faces up to five years in prison, but Paul Carmouche, her attorney, said he hopes she will not have to serve time because "she is not in good shape, mentally or physically,"

View full sizeThe fakes: One art expert said William Toyes' paintings were too perfect, and he was always able to produce specific paintings for clients.

Both Toyes are to be sentenced Oct. 21. Some restitution may be ordered -- the amount has not been determined -- but Carmouche said the two are "basically destitute."

Also charged in the federal case is Robert Lucky Jr., the art dealer with whom the Toyes allegedly worked. He is scheduled to plead guilty to mail fraud Monday in Alexandria, said James Boren, his attorney.

This is not the same charge to which the Toyes have pleaded guilty, Boren said.

Lucky "denies being involved in a conspiracy with the Toyes," Boren said, "but he acknowledged that he did misrepresent the source of the paintings to some people that he sold paintings to."

'He fooled me'

Art experts have acknowledged Toye's skill. "He fooled me," said William Fagaly, a curator at the New Orleans Museum of Art, whose areas of expertise include folk art.

View full sizeThe real deal: Hunter painted such rituals of country life as fishing, riding horseback, going to school and burying the dead. She kept painting out of her home until 1987, the year before she died.

Of all the people who created fake Hunter paintings, Toye was "by far the best," said Whitehead, a retired journalism professor at Northwestern State University who is co-author of a Hunter biography to be published next year. He lives in Natchitoches.

The Toyes "were making something they could sell," Whitehead said, "and they figured out where the market was. You can't sell many Renoirs in Baton Rouge, but there are a lot of Clementine Hunters in Baton Rouge."

The Toyes succeeded, Whitehead said, because they knew what a forger should do:

Copy the works of a popular artist.

Set reasonable prices that make the works attractive to collectors of moderate means. High prices scare off potential customers.

Never try to duplicate the works of venerated, heavily studied artists such as Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso or Henri Matisse. These masters and their works have been scrutinized and written about by squadrons of scholars who can spot a fake in a nanosecond.

Artist was a late bloomer

Like Grandma Moses, a folk artist to whom Hunter has often been compared, Hunter didn't pick up a brush until she was well into adulthood. Her venture into art started in 1939, when she spied some paint that belonged to an artist visiting Melrose Plantation, where Hunter had worked in the cotton field, laundry and kitchen.

She asked permission to do what she called "mark a painting." Her canvas was a torn window shade.

That picture was the first of a torrent of paintings showing flowers and such rituals of country life as fishing, riding horseback, going to school and burying the dead. Hunter kept painting out of her home until 1987, the year before she died, Whitehead said.

"I used to pick up little pieces of board and all kinds of little pieces of paper," Hunter said in a 1985 interview. "Painted on everything. I didn't know if I was doing right or wrong, but I was painting. And I gave it all away. I liked what I was painting."

Hunter, who pronounced her first name "Clementeen," kept no records of what she had painted and the people to whom she had sold or given them.

That made her work vulnerable to unauthorized copying. So did the fact that her style was simple and easy to duplicate, said Jim Lane, a retired art teacher from Vincent, Ohio, who has written about Hunter for CyberPathway's Art World, an online art magazine.

Too-perfect paintings

But William Toye made several mistakes, Whitehead said, not the least of which was his ability to provide specific Hunter paintings that people requested, long after the artist had died.

Moreover, Whitehead said, Toye's pictures were too perfect.

Just as Babe Ruth didn't hit a home run every time he stepped up to the plate, not every genuine Hunter painting is a masterpiece, Whitehead said.

"Clementine had outstanding paintings," he said, "but there were many mundane paintings. The ones he sold in this group were extraordinarily good paintings, and they kept coming perfectly. When you see 10 extraordinary paintings, you become suspicious."

There were small details, he said, such as the type of material Toye used -- not the hard cardboard Hunter favored -- and the paintings' sizes.

"There were very few of the Toye fakes that were 18-by-24 (inches) or 16-by-20 (inches) that Clementine liked to paint," Whitehead said. "You would see 6-by-27 (inches), 11-by-19 (inches), all these odd sizes."

In his forgeries, Whitehead said, William Toye invented a new Hunter genre. While Hunter generally depicted one theme per painting, Toye combined them to show, for instance, people picking and ginning cotton.

"That was a giveaway" that the painting probably was bogus, Whitehead said.

Whitehead also learned to spot a fake by looking at the eyes of the people in the painting.

"She painted her eyes with a dot of paint," he said. "I couldn't reproduce it, but Toye couldn't, either."